On cold winter mornings, when the sun suddenly falls on the Bosphorus and that faint vapour begins to rise from the surface, the huzun is so dense that you can almost touch it, almost see it spread like a film over its people and its landscapes.

"Huzun - the word is meant to convey a feeling of deep spiritual loss. We experience the thing called huzun when we have invested too much in worldly pleasures and material gain. ... If huzun has been central to Istanbul culture, poetry and everyday life over the past two centuries, if it dominates our music, it must be at least partly because we see it as a honor" Orhan Pamuk - Istanbul

But what I am trying to describe now is not the melancholy of Istanbul, but the huzun in which we see ourself reflected, the huzun we absorb with pride and share as a community. To feel this huzun is to see the scenes, evoke the memories, in which the city itself becomes the very illustration, the very essence, of huzun. I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the street lamps in the back streets returning home carrying plastic bags....

...Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, a pail in their hand and one eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from one financial crisis to the next and then wait shiveringall day for a customer to appear; of the barbers who complain that men don't shave as much after an economic crisis; of the children who play ball between the cars on cobblestone streets. (Orhan Pamuk - Istambul)